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Absolutely not.
As with walking, you should be looking to where you want to go, not downwards.

Hooking in is best done as you pump the sail towards you as part of your acceleration/driving the board. With lines that swing (a bit) this means you can hook in without unsettling the board trim. Even with a low spreader bar, the hook can catch the line like a trapeze artist catches a swinging trapeze bar.

If you must use those rigid fixed lines then the technique is a bit different – where you still pump the sail towards you but raise yourself up on your toes and then lower yourself into the line.

Above all, the hooking in process should become automatic, so as not to distract you from the driving.

Hooking out is the same but in reverse. Pump the sail towards you and allow the dampened swing of the lines to let the line unhook itself under its own weight. The exception to this is if the wind has dropped and you have lost planing speed – when you may need to jump out of the lines to unhook, so as to get into a slogging position.

Hooking in technique will vary according to what sort of windsurfing you are doing. For example: a slalom sailor on big kit finds his boom height varies more when setting off and during transitions. That's because the mast rake varies more with slalom gear than it does with smaller freeride or wave or freestyle kit.

Last edited by basher; 23rd April 2018 at 09:13 AM.
Reason: process not 'precess'

Ah that is simple. Too long spent in dubious shopping centres on the Equator keeping your head down so nobody recognised you..
Now you are back in the real world, that habit will simply disappear..
As the wide mouthed frog said.."there's not many of those round here"

I only look down when it goes horribly wrong. Usually if I miss, have suddenly realised my harness is still in the car, or if I have just hooked in mid gyre and am about to launch head first into the water.

It’s a set up thing! I like stiff lines that stay where I want them. If they are in the right place then you don’t need to look but first few times on each tack I will probably look to see how they are set. It’s only a thing if you have been messing with your rig in some way.